CASE STUDY: University of Cambridge

Unified IT Service Management for Oneof the World’s Leading Universities
Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge consists of
31 colleges and 100 academic departments. Gaining one of
the cherished 20,000 student places is the reserve of theextremely academic. Once students have gained theircoveted place, they have access to 10,000 academic andadmin staff to support their studies. Equally important to
the modern-day Cambridge learning experience is having
constant access from any internet device, to digitallyenabled infrastructure services.

Consolidating Service Desks
Profile:One of the world’s oldest, mostprestigious and influential universities in
the world.

Location:
Cambridge, England

Industry:
Education

Website:https://www.cam.ac.uk/Solution:▪ Ivanti® Service Manager,

powered by Heat

Key Benefits to University ofCambridge:▪ Merged two autonomous IT

Service Desks into one, with fullreporting and ITIL processes▪ Provided access to system via

the Cloud for a seamless digital,
24x7x365 experience for staff
and students▪ Improved user support withincident, request, self-service,
and knowledge management
modules, increasing productivity

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In 2015, two independent IT support divisions each running their own
separate service desk merged into one University Information Services(UIS) department with 300 staff. Their remit—to provide cohesive IT
support to the University’s 20,000 end users that conforms to ITIL bestpractices, with expansion capabilities to 65,000 accounts for support staff,alumni, visiting researchers, students, and those with multiple IT users.
Given the size of the environment and the disparate nature of former IT
helpdesks, the opportunity to merge and modernize could not have arrived
too soon. Both service desk systems leveraged entirely different software,both classified all queries as incidents, and both offered limited ticketing
capabilities with no metrics for reporting. With no linkage possible between
the systems, tickets were lost, staff and student confidence plummeted,and complaints were frequent. The situation escalated at the start of eachacademic year as new students arrived and inbound queries peaked.
Steve Hoensch, Head of Frontline Services, UIS, knew that the new
department’s service delivery ambitions would only be fulfilled with aservice management solution available centrally in the Cloud. Onceestablished, this infrastructure solution would assist not just IT, but would
also help automate processes across Estates, HR, Finance, andOperations. Steve recalls how decisions to deployment were made:“We had taken the previous service desk systems as far as we could. Not
only were they incompatible, they were falling out of hardware support,
which left us vulnerable and unable to band-aid the systems any further. It
was apparent that with the new UIS department framework, we needed tooffer a single portal solution for future centralized services that would giveus the unified structure to work efficiently and cohesively, and provide
reporting so that we can understand and improve on the student’s digitalexperience.”

CASE STUDY: University of Cambridge

University of Oxford Mentors on Their
Service Management from the Cloud
Five vendors were invited to present their solutions
directly to the new UIS group before reducing theshortlist to two. Before the final decision was taken, theServices team spent two days on-site consulting theirpeers at University of Oxford, gaining valuable insights
into how they had made similar decisions three years
prior when the University of Oxford had opted for Ivanti®
Service Manager to combine three independent service
desks.
With striking similarities between both universities’
requirements, Cambridge was able to immersethemselves with the platform and explore thecustomization approaches that Oxford adopted. Armedwith insight and peer recommendations, UIS
commenced rollout with a phased approach to include
migration and merger from existing support desks to fullincident, request, self-service, and knowledge baserollout. Sixty departments were included in the firstmigration phase. The complexity of merging so manydifferent departments was eased by using the software’s
workflow designer tool to drag, drop, trial, and build
workflows that could flex and change before and during
deployment.
Incident management was the first process to roll out.
Given the former systems were devoid of all metrics andall inbound tickets were frequently lost between
departments, complaints and dissatisfaction were theonly prior measurement index. Using Ivanti incident
management, UIS for the first time had access toaccurate first-time fix rates. They were able to correctlyclassify incidents, requests, and problems, and gain abetter understanding of the types of calls. This in turnallowed them to allocate the best support resourcesfrom the 15-person first-line call team more effectively.

Automated Self-Service to Go
For the ITSM request module in Phase 2 of rollout, thesystem featured 30 automated service requests,including popular requests such as ‘password reset’ or‘increase mailbox size.’ Today, UIS continues adding
further requests configurations and envisions a total of
100 automated requests, including drop downs forspecifying new laptops, attaching approvals and POs,and providing requester status feedback.
The self-service module means that requests aresubmitted seamlessly via any device onto the portal for

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simplified student experience. On access, relevant
planned maintenance and software updates arehighlighted so that students can self-assure without
contacting UIS. The module also highlights communal
problems, such as ‘Connectivity problem in theChemistry Department.’ If there is still an issue, users
can self-serve and log tickets. When they have identified
their issue from a dropdown, they can opt to connect toa knowledge base of articles written by Service
Managers who suggest easy fixes to common problems,such as ‘My printer is broken.’ The knowledge basefeatures a variety of levels to accommodate all technicalabilities. At all times, users can track their service
requests for updates. UIS hopes to increase self-service
usage to around 25% of all inbound tickets.

Ongoing Positive Results
With 12 months of rollout and with increasing confidence
and acceptance of user self-service, UIS reflects on thesignificant achievements that the deployment hasafforded. Steve Hoensch notes:“This deployment wasn’t just about unifying old ticketing
helpdesks. This was about providing ITIL-based
processes and results metrics while deploying across IT
and other departments. From the outset, we understoodthat we had differing levels of ITIL maturity across theuniversity, so we have used the features within IvantiService Manager to simplify and enable custom roles,
layouts, and workflows according to the requirements of
those using them.”

Cross-Departmental Satisfaction
The results are not just limited to IT. Steve has garneredinternal reactions on usage from HR and Finance. Steve
shares the HR departmental feedback: “HR have foundthat moving from a simple system to Ivanti has improved
their efficacy, being able to share tasks and tickets with
IT. Using the same system means jobs are completed
faster without spanning across multiple systems andproductivity gains will be increased further still as more
complicated HR procedures are turned into
Service Requests over the next few months.”
Steve also shares feedback from Finance after a monthof usage: “The transition in Finance has been simple,
due to the customization of the tool. It is now easy for
us to share tickets directly and view the process of eachjob, which was previously not an option. In total, we areaiming to create around 400 service requests to support
the finance procedures and processes.”CASE STUDY: University of Cambridge

Note: University of Cambridge’s results are specific to its
total customer environment / experience, of which Ivanti
is a part. Individual results may vary based on eachcustomer’s unique environment.

About Ivanti
Ivanti unifies IT and Security Operations to better
manage and secure the digital workplace. From PCs tomobile devices, VDI and the data center, Ivantidiscovers IT assets on-premises and in the cloud,improves IT service delivery, and reduces risk withinsights and automation. The company also helps
organizations leverage modern technology in thewarehouse and across the supply chain to improvedelivery without modifying backend systems. Ivanti is
headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has offices
all over the world. For more information, visit
www.ivanti.com and follow @GoIvanti

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